As most lawyers and people know, the law requires notice before certain types of legal actions can proceed. The most ready example of the need for public notice, of course, would be notice by publication in serving a lawsuit where the defendant cannot be found for personal service of the summons. Currently, notice by publication is accomplished by publication in a newspaper. Given the well publicized disintegration of the paper newspaper industry currently taking place (which is in turn due partly to the fact that only 19% of persons under the age of 35 still read a newspaper at least once per week), this form of notice no longer serves the public policy behind the enabling statutes (i.e., the widest possible dissemination of the notice to the public). Thus, this traditional means of public notice no longer serves its legal function. Additionally, the costs incurred in the use of traditional methods can be much greater than those associated with on-line notice postings. Further, the security and archival options of traditional notice methods are limited. Traditional methods of providing notice also suffer from limited coverage due to the fact that notice is constrained to the available newspaper circulation area. Finally, traditional methods of notice are constrained by delivery schedules and cycles of newspaper vendors and delivery personnel along with the hours of operation of many courthouses.
Using the Internet to provide notice services overcomes only some of the shortcomings of traditional print publication. Currently, the only forms of Internet-based public notice that exist are what can be termed “republication” notices. For example, newspapers often publish an online version of their printed notices on a website. Other organizations have attempted to provide limited, secondary publication public notice services via the Internet, but have failed to create a centralized forum for all state-encompassed jurisdictions and/or a forum of original publication for public notice within a jurisdiction that is both government sanctioned (or sanctioned by some other useful body) and quality controlled, or not, as the jurisdiction and case might require.
As such, a need exists for a cost-effective, quality-controlled forum for providing centralized, original-jurisdiction legal and other public notice within a legal jurisdiction.